This is the 25th anniversary of Facets of Faith. To observe this, every so often, I’m choosing a column from the past to rerun. This one ran originally on Sept.
It’s been a long time coming a horror film set in a Hasidic section of Brooklyn, where much of the dialogue is in Yiddish. Films that deal with the supernatural are certainly no stranger to Jewish lore and culture. Since the advent of cinema, there have been several films made about dybbuks, demons and golems, movies produced in Europe, Israel and the United States, movies in Hebrew, Polish, French, English, and now once again in Yiddish.
In his debut feature film “The Vigil,” film director Keith Thomas trains his camera lens on the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, where an OTD Jew (or “off the derech” a term that refers to a Jew who has left the Hasidic world), is in search of a different life.